Last month’s Ontario windstorm most expensive natural disaster for insurers in five years

The windstorm that hit Ontario and parts of Quebec in early May cost insurers $410 million in damages — $380 million of which went towards repair costs in Ontario alone, according to a recent report by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc.

That’s the most money that Ontario insurers have spent on a single event since 2013, when the Toronto floods inflicted nearly $1 billion in damages.

Gusts from the early May windstorm, which lasted several hours in total, damaged roofs, knocked over trees, and caused power outages across Ontario.

It is also already the fifth major storm to hit the province since the start of 2018. In January, February, and April, southern Ontario saw a rash of storms that resulted in more than $300 million in damage claims.

Counting the recent windstorm, “insurers have already paid out three-quarters of a billion dollars, just five months into 2018,” said Kim Donaldson, vice president, Ontario at IBC.

IBC noted that their numbers did not include the costs endured by taxpayers and governments, which have been mounting at an even faster rate this year than the costs endured by insurers.

Climate change has become a growing concern for insurers, which have been bearing the brunt of repair costs as extreme weather occurs more and more frequently.